NRA gathers in Texas as pro-gun senators face backlash

America's most powerful gun lobby will gather in Texas this weekend to
celebrate the defeat of gun control laws even as it rushes to prop up
Republican senators now facing a public backlash.

Image 1 of 2

Family members watch as 11-year-old Mark takes aim with an AR-15 style assault rifle on the exhibit floor of the George R Brown Convention Center during the National Rifle Association's first convention since the Connecticut school massacre. Photo: Reuters

Image 1 of 2

Event goers look at guns in an exhibit ahead of the National Rifle Association's annual meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TexasPhoto: REUTERS

More than 70,000 people will attend the three day-annual convention of the National Rifle Association, which spearheaded the resistance to White House plans for fresh gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

But even as its delegates cheered their success, the NRA's leadership warned that the decades-long struggle over gun rights in America had not ended with last month's victory in the Senate.

“We don't mistake battles for wars,” said David Keene, the outgoing NRA president, before the opening of the summit whose slogan is “Stand and Fight”. “It was a victory in a battle, but the war continues.”

Many of the pro-gun Republican senators whose votes defeated a bipartisan bill to expand background checks during gun sales are now facing public anger and coordinated attacks from progressive groups.

At the centre of the storm is Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire and the only senator from liberal New England to oppose the background checks bill.

She has faced falling approval ratings, a barrage of negative ads, and been confronted three times in the last week at public meetings in her state - once by the daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the murdered principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Judy Stadtman, the co-founder of the gun control group Projects for Safer Communities, told the Daily Telegraph: "It has been a very costly vote for Senator Ayotte and we're mobilising to let her know unhappy her constituents are."

In response, the NRA has begun airing its own ads in New Hampshire praising her for having "the courage to oppose misguided gun-control laws that would not have prevented Sandy Hook".

Meanwhile, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, admitted his polling numbers had collapsed to "somewhere just below pond scum" following his vote against gun control measures.

The White House hopes to channel public anger into a second push for new firearms laws and President Barack Obama vowed that his defeat in the Senate would not deter him.

"The last time we had major gun legislation it took six, seven, eight tries to get passed," Mr Obama told a press conference in Mexico. "One thing I am is persistent."

Gun control advocates will also try to make themselves heard at the NRA's Texas convention, staging a three-night vigil near the nine-acre site.

The “No More Names” protest will includes the names of the 26 children and teachers killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook and some 3,300 others who have died since from gun violence.

Inside the exhibition hall business is likely to continue as usual and hundreds of exhibitors will sell almost every imaginable type of firearm from .38 calibre “pink lady” revolvers to the AR-15 rifles used at Sandy Hook.

Sarah Palin speaks at the National Rifle Association's annual meeting

Delegates will hear from rousing paeans to the right to bear arms from Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, and admire antique weapons like the Winchester Model 1873 rifle, affectionately known as "The Gun that Won the West".

Jim Porter, the NRA's incoming president, has struck an even more militant note than his predecessor, arguing in a speech last June that all US civilians should train with standard military

firearms so “they’re ready to fight tyranny.”

“Every time you take your nephew out to the gun club, every time you

take your daughter skeet shooting, every time you take your grandchildren out, we’re passing on the legacy of freedom,” Mr Porter told the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association.

NRA delegates arriving at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Thursday would have been greeted with a chaotic scene of scurrying police officers and forensic examiners.

Earlier in the day an armed man entered terminal and began firing into the air before he shot himself and was simultaneously gunned down by airport security.